Cant play Audio CDs

Win98 and Media Player 7.1, Dell Optiplex PIII 550 with integrated sound, Samsung 30x CDROM SCB104(?). All other sound files play and games and their sounds, no problem. When you insert an audio cd, the green light blinks and the CD really never spins up. Checking the drives under My Computer show 'AUDIO CD D:', so it recognizes it. Explore the CD and you see individual tracks of music. Try to play or open them, you get nothing. Downloaded Media Player 7.1 and some Codec patch file from MS, no help. Now when run Media Player, it gives Error 0x80040265 - does not support file type. (.CDA assuming)
Any ideas? BTW - I put a creative 24x CDROM in, it did same thing.

Hmm....Corrupt Win98 ? Try reinstalling Win98 on top of itself. It will refresh and reinstall any corrupted files related to Win98. But before that try uninstalling Media Player 7.1 and reinstall that. Or try using Winamp as a CD player to see if that will play the CD fine. If you can browse any CD's and you've tried them on two different CD rom drives in the same machine, it could be corrupted files or possibly a virus. I would update virus scanning software dat files and scan your system. Let me know if any of these ideas help or not. Thanks!

lpenrod,
It may not be the audio cable since he says the drive never spins up. If it is not even playing the audio CD at all, it is something else. Also he is getting an error code.

drawohj,

Which bring me to another question, you said you tried the other drive and it too did not work. Same issues? Get the error message and won't spin up reading Audio CD's?
or Any Cd's? or will read some but not others? Give us more detail as to what you tried and have not tried. Also since most sound cards are equipped with only one Audio cable the other CDRom drive may not be plugged into the Audio card in which case you wont get CD Audio from that drive. Second thing to try is to see if you can plug in a set of headphones to the CDrom drive and insert a music CD and see if you can hear anything through the headphones. If so something between the CDrom drive and Sound card could be malfunctioning or something between the CDrom and the software applications or OS is not right.

To all, thanks for jumping on this one. I have not seen a problem quite like this one. Both CDROM drives performed exactly the same which leads me to think it is software. But what software. I reloaded Media Player twice, I unloaded and reloaded audio compression files in windows setup. It reads data CDs perfectly. It is just audio CDs they never spin-up but yet they can be explored and veiw individual tracks on the disc. The error message that media player 6.4 and the basic windows CD player gave was this "Please insert audio disc" and when you manually went to the drive in media player and tried to force it to play it would have "Disc that you are trying to play is not inserted, insert correct disc" - lotta help that was. Only when I went MP7.1 did I get the error code (that was no help when crossed at MS KB).

Version of Win98SE was just loaded, I have not had the PC long, all that has been done was load IE6.0 and MP7.1 and some...mostly done to try and fix this problem.

Can you confirm if your cd drive is set to auto run - go to start menu, settings, control panel, click on the system icon and chose the device manager tab. Click on the + of the CDROM devices and select the properties of the drive connected to your sound card. (Right click and select properties or click on the properties below the window). Under the settings tab the autoinsert notification should be ticked to run your cds automatically on insert. I assume from your earlier coments though you have started the music software and still cant access the cd so this may not be the problem.

Can you confirm if your cd drive is set to auto run - go to start menu, settings, control panel, click on the system icon and chose the device manager tab. Click on the + of the CDROM devices and select the properties of the drive connected to your sound card. (Right click and select properties or click on the properties below the window). Under the settings tab the autoinsert notification should be ticked to run your cds automatically on insert. I assume from your earlier coments though you have started the music software and still cant access the cd so this may not be the problem.

To all, thanks for jumping on this one. I have not seen a problem quite like this one. Both CDROM drives performed exactly the same which leads me to think it is software. But what software. I reloaded Media Player twice, I unloaded and reloaded audio compression files in windows setup. It reads data CDs perfectly. It is just audio CDs they never spin-up but yet they can be explored and veiw individual tracks on the disc. The error message that media player 6.4 and the basic windows CD player gave was this "Please insert audio disc" and when you manually went to the drive in media player and tried to force it to play it would have "Disc that you are trying to play is not inserted, insert correct disc" - lotta help that was. Only when I went MP7.1 did I get the error code (that was no help when crossed at MS KB).

Version of Win98SE was just loaded, I have not had the PC long, all that has been done was load IE6.0 and MP7.1 and some...mostly done to try and fix this problem.

To all, thanks for jumping on this one. I have not seen a problem quite like this one. Both CDROM drives performed exactly the same which leads me to think it is software. But what software. I reloaded Media Player twice, I unloaded and reloaded audio compression files in windows setup. It reads data CDs perfectly. It is just audio CDs they never spin-up but yet they can be explored and veiw individual tracks on the disc. The error message that media player 6.4 and the basic windows CD player gave was this "Please insert audio disc" and when you manually went to the drive in media player and tried to force it to play it would have "Disc that you are trying to play is not inserted, insert correct disc" - lotta help that was. Only when I went MP7.1 did I get the error code (that was no help when crossed at MS KB).

Version of Win98SE was just loaded, I have not had the PC long, all that has been done was load IE6.0 and MP7.1 and some...mostly done to try and fix this problem.

kahlean, the win98 default cdplayer and media player6.4 gave the same error upon inserting the audio cd, thanks. Have reloaded audio compression mulitmedia files, doesn't this take care of codec files?

just to make sure that this problem is not due to your cdrom, exit from windows and proceed to dos. now insert an audio cd, and press the play button on your cdrom if available. connect your cdrom audio jack to a headphone and see if there is any sound coming out.

if there isnt any problem, i suppose it might be due to hardware failure.

start-run-msinfo32-tools-Automatic Skip Driver Agent
Please run this to ensure you don't have any critical operation failures on your system.

This issue can occur if you start Windows Media Player while the Sony CD Extreme program is installed and running on your computer... does this apply to you?

Are these standard audio CDs or ones burned locally? Have you checked to ensure the discs are clean?

A friend recently had problems somewhat like yours, and although these things may not apply to your situation, perhaps some help. Her problem was tryig to play Microsoft Multimedia Schubert for Windows, version 1.0 .. in her case, the [MCI] CD Audio driver was not be installed in the Drivers section of the Control Panel. Install the [MCI] CD Audio driver in the Control Panel if it is not installed. Another application was open (such as Media Player) that uses the CD-Audio driver (set to CD-Audio), or any Windows CD player running such as Music Box, which comes with Microsoft Windows Sound System. And she had 2 CD-Rom drives, and the CD is not in the first available CD-ROM drive. That was the clincher for her.

Asta, Thanks for the reference articles, I am hoping something will come from these. I had managed to stumble onto one of these already. The type of CD does not matter, it plays burned and original data CDs just fine...I have tried both burned and original audio as well with same results. This PC is one I installed at another site, therefore the long time between suggestions and the time I get to try these...please be patient with me. I really hope MCI CD Audio driver issue turns out to fix this. I have compared the set of driver loaded on a working win98 PC for comparison to troubled PC. Back soon.

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